


The Abnormal State

by North_of_Kyrimorut



Series: Foxiyo Week 2020 [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, F/M, Falling In Love, Fox Thoughts, Foxiyo Week 2020, Growing up on Kamino does not equip you for healthy relationships, Is this healthy?, Love Confessions, Past Violence, Probably not as graphic as the warning would suggest, Probably not., Stream of Consciousness, otherwise known as
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:48:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28366440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/North_of_Kyrimorut/pseuds/North_of_Kyrimorut
Summary: In which Fox contemplates the nature of love.Foxiyo Week 2020 – Agony: torture, trauma, heartbreak
Relationships: Riyo Chuchi/CC-1010 | Fox
Series: Foxiyo Week 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2077149
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	The Abnormal State

**Author's Note:**

> This has probably already been done after a fashion, but it's what the muse kicked out when I thought of 'Fox' and 'torture.' Some mentions of past violence, but calling them 'graphic' is probably a little strong.
> 
> Somewhat dark Fox because, honestly, I suspect Fox’s brain is a little bit of a dark place.

_In love, happiness is an abnormal state. – Proust_

The modules on torture were extensive for command-class cadets. The psychology and physiology of both resisting and inflicting torture were covered; interactive sessions made sure the lessons stuck. _Muscle memory is the most reliable,_ Fox’s blasé old sergeant had intoned, just after he had carved a permanent memory aid into Fox’s leg. His sergeant wore Corellian bloodstripes, and Fox almost laughed and said, _Look, Sarge, we match!_

But he remained silent, and aced his modules. He was professional and efficient on the one side, and had sky-high resistance on the other. He outpaced his batch-brothers in that regard, ranked up with Alphas when it came to pain tolerance and the ability to stay silent. Not even Prime could complain.

 _Can’t be coerced,_ one of the other trainers said approvingly.

Won’t _be,_ Fox’s sergeant corrected. It was a point of pride for him. _These beskar-bucketheads think they have the monopoly on grit,_ he later told Fox. _They_ don’t.

Fox believed him. He also believed in himself. There was a reason why he was the one who was ultimately sent to Coruscant to protect the beating heart of the Republic. No one else bore as much _personal_ weight of responsibility to the Chancellor, to the Senate, to the Jedi Temple as Fox.

He was up to the task.

Torture didn’t actually figure into his daily responsibilities much, but Fox still reflected on his training from time to time. That torture was not a reliable means of gathering intelligence was well-documented, but there were other possible outcomes that might be deemed desirable.

Perhaps the subject’s deepest secrets would not be revealed, but just _what_ those secrets were might be changed. Old loyalties could be shaken; new ones could be urged to grow. Different hopes could take on greater significance. Dreams could become the most important thing in the galaxy to a being, when nothing else remained.

Fox knew that, with enough patience and pressure, even the best of soldiers could be fundamentally changed.

By those standards, love was torture and Fox had been broken.

If the enemy—Fox could no longer articulate _quite_ so clearly who that was—had _planned_ on an infiltration to undermine him, they could not have done better than putting Riyo Chuchi in his scope. Their relationship had started with the slow process of walking over common ground. Their focusses may have been slightly different, but the institutions they believed in were intertwined. They both hoped the same high-sounding rhetoric was true, despite evidence to the contrary. She treated him with human dignity, though she herself was not human. Inside jokes evolved as they started to share a history. She had a different smile for him. Somehow, his defenses were completely bypassed without him ever realizing there was a breach to begin with. It was like the good cop giving a prisoner a cup of water after hours under the burning lights.

After the extraordinarily classified— read-the-report-slit-your-throat-classified—events on Umbara, Fox stopped caring about confidentiality with Riyo and there was no coercion about it. He was designed to turn to his brothers to cope with shared trauma; he was trained to shoulder the burden alone. Neither option seemed viable anymore. Every clone who learned of or lived through that nightmare was crushed by it. For Fox, it was the first time he thought there might be a reason for all the contingency protocols beyond academic exercise. How many of them would he be called on to implement before this war ended?

Riyo’s security clearance was high, but Fox’s was higher. More secrets passed his desk than any other clone officer in the Grand Army of the Republic, and he never shared them. But his heart had been too broken and he could not fit the pieces back together this time. He had a deep well of frustrations waiting to overflow and spill out: the fallibility of Jedi, the haphazard and costly strategies the Chancellor approved, and weight of his own vitally important but soul-shattering assignment. And—he _trusted._ He trusted her as surely as he trusted himself.

She stopped him before he said too much. For a moment, he was grateful—she had saved him from a moment of weakness. For a moment, he was angry—she knew that he was a man like any other, so why wouldn't she allow him to express his truest thoughts and feelings? Neither of his initial assessments proved correct. She did let him share his secrets, but she needed to share her own first.

 _Business?_ he asked her, when she revealed one of her darkest moments, something that could not only strip her of her position but also her planet of protection. Possibly, if anyone found out what had passed on that Trade Federation ship, it could cost her life.

She shook her head. _Blackmail._

His first thought was that she should be arrested. The second was to wonder if the conspiracy went deeper than one underhanded deal with the enemy’s proxy. His third was to remember that it was a classic interrogation technique, offering a little bit of information to gain the subject’s trust.

His fourth was that he did not care. It felt like mutually assured destruction as he spoke with her. If he turned her in, he would be believed because he was the most decorated officer in GAR with the heaviest responsibility of keeping the homefront safe. _She_ would be believed if she spoke against him because she was a senator, natural-born, and the idea of a high-ranking clone with doubts would be too dangerous to ignore.

It became clear to him, the more they talked and shared and enmired one another, that he was dealing with something completely different, something utterly untouched on in his training.

It was not an infiltration. It was not quid pro quo, or indemnity, or any other military maneuver or political dance. It was honesty. It was sharing the bitter parts of life, the ugliness that they usually covered with gold jewelry and red plastoid. They both stood in the heart of the Republic, oath-sworn, honor-bound to serve and protect. They did so without shame, without hesitation, and they were worse people for it.

It was love, Fox knew, and it was torture.

He thought about his sergeant, and the bloodstripes cut into his own skin, and wondered why _this_ was never covered in the modules.

There was no going back from it, either. Fox took it for granted that this was ‘once in a lifetime’ kind of stuff for him. Perhaps he could only keep her for the few short years left in her appointment. Perhaps he could only keep her until a blaster bolt in some bottom-level alley ended him.

He liked that idea, of keeping her until the end.

Pantorans already outlived humans on the average. Even if he managed to live out his full lifespan of thirty or forty years, she would still have over half her life ahead of her. It would be time enough for her to forget him and move forward. March on.

She told him that she loved him. He believed her, and his heart glowed with the knowledge and stayed glowing.

The war worsened. Every victory came at an increasingly higher cost. Fox had grown comfortable with his doubts. He would do his duty, no matter what, and so he allowed himself the indulgence of wondering if the war would be worth it. All but one of Fox’s batch-brothers had died, along with—oh, so many of them. Whoever the hard-won peace would be for, it wasn’t for them.

He thought about Thorn. Thorn never had any doubts. Thorn was dead.

...Perhaps Riyo would be the one who reaped the benefits of their sacrifices? Maybe. Maybe not. He hoped so.

He knew there was a growing Separatist movement on Pantora. Riyo was just the representative of her people, beholden to their whims. If they decided to defect from the Republic, she would be the one to deliver the message. She told him in the quiet and the dark that, if that were to happen, she would do her last duty, step aside for her replacement to stand before the Confederacy, and find some neutral world to disappear on. There was an implied invitation in the confession, one that Fox could neither accept nor decline.

Riyo started to lose people almost as quickly as Fox did. Her friends in the Senate were scattered on the winds of ideology. Her family had always stayed at a comfortably warm-but-not-too-warm distance, and now treated her with civil neutrality. And then there was one of her most trusted friends—the Jedi that Fox arrested and ordered his men to shoot on sight. They talked round and round and round about what had happen to the Jedi, and why, and how. 

He thought about the contingency orders again. What if the orders were wrong again? What if they were right but came too late?

They spoke of the unspeakable and they survived together. There were never any recriminations, only conversations. _Many_ conversations, agonizing in both her detached expediency and his fragile regret. Or was it the other way around? They shared so much, Fox sometimes had difficulty parsing out where Riyo started and he ended.

The reality constructed by an interrogation technician was artificial, but the changes it prompted in a subject could last a lifetime. The only thing a survivor could do, Fox thought, was learn how to live with those changes.

He told her that he loved her, months after she first said so to him. He was never meant to love, not as he now did. He was never supposed to find meaning in life beyond the one first taught to him in flash-training. But he had, and he had changed. He could not help but feel that it was a change for the better. He treasured every glowing moment he was never supposed to have.

He didn’t need Riyo forever; he just wanted her until his dying day.

He tells her that as well, in the quiet and the dark. She cries and he wonders if love is torture for her, too.


End file.
